Sabrina and I were near Paulo behind the cabin, and had pulled our pistols from their holsters when it dawned on me: Other than in the alley in Fairfield, which didn't count, I had never even pointed a gun at anyone before, much less shot at them. This wasn't the movies, where the hero just whips off a few shots. This was real life. I had seen Sabrina shoot someone right in front of me and she didn't seem altered in any way—thanks to her years in prison, most likely.

She must have sensed my hesitation, because she said in a very clear and forceful voice, "Someone is trying to kill you. Are you going to allow that to happen?" The underlying message of my self-defense training.

"Hell, no," I answered, and aimed my pistol and fired. There was something about it that felt good.

Luis yelled something back to us.

Paulo interpreted. "My father says to hold your fire. A pistol will not hit its mark so far away."

The boat was coming closer, so I knew it was only a matter of time before I could fire back with a reasonable chance of hitting something … or someone.

Our boat was a mess, but it was mostly cosmetic. With a steel hull, it would take a lot to disable it. Meanwhile, the bullets continued to rain down on us. There were three of them. The other two must have been hiding when the boat passed us earlier. These guys were serious. They had chosen their attack location well; it was a fairly remote section of the river—no civilization on either side and no other boats in sight.

Luis did whatever he had to do to stabilize the boat—I had no idea what that was—and jumped to a more secure location to continue his firing. He was calm and methodical. He yelled something back to Paulo.

"You can fire now," said Paulo.

And so I did. I was actually trying to kill another human being. When, just a few minutes earlier, I was reflecting on how my life had changed, this possibility hadn't come up. But it was real now and I took Sabrina's words to heart: If I wanted to protect myself or someone I loved, I had to be willing to kill. I was willing now. In fact, with each shot I fired, I became more comfortable with the idea. They had no right to do what they were doing, and I was going to make them pay.

Their boat was getting dangerously close to ours, but so far no one had yet been hit on either side. The only casualty was a hole in my boot that I could now stick my toe through.

In the end, it was Luis—calm, cool, and collected Luis—who got us out of there. He began to change the direction of his shots away from the attackers themselves and more at something on the boat. Unlike our boat, theirs was a fiberglass hull. Luis, who had spent his life on the river in boats, knew exactly where to shoot once their boat swung around a little. Suddenly, I heard a "ka-chunk" come from their engine compartment, followed by silence. He had destroyed their engine.